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”Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune,
a genuine and passionate love of reading.”
Rufus Choate
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What did you love to read as a child?
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Handmade Homeschool 
Everything & anything! My favourite thing was to curl up with a volume of the encylopedia, or a big dictionary, but I read any book I could get my mitts on. 🙂
Hazel has just started reading Nancy Drew!! I love talking to her about them!
Did you ever hear of the Happy Hollisters? I used to love those as well! I liked Mystery Stories & Historical fictions–still do! Little Women Series, Heidi, Little Princess, Bookshop on the Quay (Irish), Judy Blume, Bobbsey Twins, Laura Ingall’s books, Mr Poppers Penquins, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, CS Lewis, etc.. I could go on and on–sometimes I feel like I just read them yesterday, I’d read them over and over again!!
Honestly–so long as it was a book and wasn’t a horror story-I was happy!
Ironically, until I was about 12 I HATED reading–probably because the books at school WERE stupid and the ones Mom read aloud to me were great! When I finally decided I could read to myself I never stopped! Sadly a generation of public school kids [here in the US at least] are having a hatred of reading instilled in them by the Accelerated Reader system tests and by all the mandated testing! [Ok, I’m stepping down off my soapbox, backing away (sheepisly) and appologizing for going off topic…….]
Everything. Little House on the Prairie, Babysitters Club, Wrinkle in Time series (never, ever gets old….even today), Monica Hughes (Crisis on Conshelf Ten), Christopher Pike, Stephen King…….I was a classic bookworm all through my school years. I was never without a book. I had ink stains on my nose.
These exact books, when I could wrastle them away from you. Babysitters Club. Narnia. Agatha Christie. Some really well-known fantasy series, the name of which I can’t remember right now (Legends, Chronicles, etc, always in trilogies, two authors)…
And many, many more. But Nancy Drew will always have a special place in my heart.
We had some of those same old volumes of Nancy Drew when I was little — more of the yellow ones than the maroon. Oh, those maroon ones were so cool — Nancy had pumps dyed to match her frocks, she drove a roadster. But the yellow ones were pretty good, too, although the sentence structure seemed simpler.
Seeing these pictures brings back such happy memories of reading and re-reading all sorts of favorite books, most of them hand-me-downs from older generations — Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, Narnia, Wrinkle in Time series, etc. etc. And stacks and stacks of comic books — Dennis the Menace, Archie, Richie Rich, and more.
The Nancy Drew books, Little House on the Prairie series and another series (covers were orange) of the fictionalized childhoods of many famous Americans. In sixth grade the school was over crowded and our class was in the library. I would sneak a book off the shelf and hide it inside my desk so I could read during class (I was bored a lot by the regular class material).
Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, The Three Investigators – pretty much anything and everything!
When I was little, I adored the Trixie Belden books. Thank goodness there were so many of them!
The Black Stallion books, Marguerite Henry’s stories, Albert Payson Terhune, Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time and it’s sequels that were out then, CW Anderson’s Billy and Blaze series, All Horses Go to Heaven and All Dogs Go to Heaven. There might be a theme running through there. 🙂
Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books (and all other horse books available to me)
L.M. Montgomery’s books (Anne, Emily, Jane, Marigold…)
Heidi books
Elsie Dinsmore books (my mom read them to me)
Narnia
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series (my mom’s influence)
Jules Verne
Nancy Drew (Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins)
Thornton Burgess (Old Mother West Wind and sequels)
Oh… I could go on and on!
I read non-fiction almost exclusively until my teens, mostly science books, anatomy, physics, geology, history books and biographies. When I started reading fiction around 11 or so, I went all out for sci-fi and fantasy, the Narnia series, LOTR, Piers Anthony, Asimov, Guy Gavriel Kay (modern fantasy set in my hometown!)
My ds, who grew up mostly home schooled, and therefore had lots of reading time as a child, had a rule: anything with a map was worth reading, lol.
Oh Nancy Drews! Especially the really OLD copies – printed in the 30’s – where she was much spunkier! I’d read Hardy Boys too.
Trixie Belden. So wanted to be her.
Laura Ingalls Wilder – but my favorite was Farmer Boy
Wrinkle in Time
Rabbit Hill
Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
Pippi Longstocking
The Dicitonary – my parents have a HUGE dictionary, beautifully bound – I used to love looking through it
Patty Fairfield books – all about a young socialite in the pre WW1 era, who of course has many adventures that all turn out miraculously well. But she was spunky enough that they are sweet.
Louisa May Alcott – Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys. Wanted to be Jo.
Narnia books. But I don’t like them as much now for some reason.
I read everything I could get my hands on. Charles Addams cartoons, Jane Austen, and mysteries. I was the youngest by about 9 years, so there was always a span of reading material around….
Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, any kids books and any of my parents’ books I could get my hands on – Dick Francis, Jack Higgins, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie – yeah I read anything!
In one class at school we had to work up the shelf from the beginners readers to the advanced readers at the top. When I told the teacher I’d read ALL the books, she told me to start at the bottom again! Thankfully another teacher was more sympathetic to my appetite and started lending me her own books, so I was reading ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ at the age of 10.
ah, enid blyton, trixie belden, nancy drew, the bobbsey twins, wrinkle in time, the hobbit, the chronicles of narnia, roald dahl – so many of the ones already mentioned…add to it The Westing Game and the Tatooed Potato, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Road to Tarabithia, and The Peoples’ Encyclopedia…we lived for 3 years in the parsonage apartment in Moscow, Russia, and it served not only to house the pastor and his family, but it was also the library!!!!! Think walls lined with bookshelves, throughout the dining room, living room, hallway…heaven.
My favorite set of books was a boxed set of Little House on the Prairie. In grade six we had a bad house fire and the only thing I really cared about losing was that set of books.
Hi, I loved to read. I read all The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew, Paddington books and Beverly Cleary, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I read some classic juvenile fiction, a bunch of the Dell Yearlings. Then onto Judy Blume. After that some ‘problem novels’ for juvenile fiction which I recently looked up again i.e. the one about anorexia “The Best Little Girl in the World” and some about divorce, although neither of those were issues in my life but I was interested in what other kids and young teens were struggling with. Then at 13 it was on to reading adult fiction like Stephen King and then some Joan Collins trashy beach reads. I also read biographies of people that interested me, Jim Morrison and Marilyn Monroe.
Nancy Drew and her special friend Ned…..those were the days. The Mysterious Mannequin was my favourite.
But the ones I still read year after year are “The Hounds of the Morrigan” by Pat O’Shea, and “A Traveller in Time” by Alison Uttley.
I also loved the quotes during the Opening Ceremonies…actually the whole thing was pretty wonderful. For favourites I can’t decide between the “Who Has Seen the Wind” sequence and the First People’s scenes before the ice broke up….or maybe the fiddlers…
Ok., so maybe this isn’t “real” reading, but I also loved to curl up and ‘read’ the Sears Catalogue, as a younger girl 🙂
Trixie Belden, the Anne of Green Gables series. I spent a few summers absolutely devouring Trixie, though. I’d love to find a good set of them for my daughters.
I loved the Little House books, the Great Brain books, many of the Newbery winners (Island of the Blue Dolphins, the Witch of Blackbird Pond, Johnny Tremain, etc.), and a series of books about dogs by Jim Kjelgaard — I think I read the copies in my school’s library thin!
Loved –
Anne of Green Gables
The Babysitters club (they started when I was in elementary school)
Judy Blume
Janette Oake (my mom bought me those)
In highschool, Stephen King and then I discovered Danielle Steele (terrible, terrible for a young girl, but my mom wasn’t a reader and didn’t check up on what I was checking out of the library)
Little Women
Jo’s boys
I even read a biography of Martha Washington which I still remember vividly.
When I was 13 I saw Gone with the Wind – my dad told me there was a book version and not long after that I was perusing the shelves at my granddad’s house and found a copy. Turned out it was my great-grandmother’s 1936 (2nd edition) copy and she had written notes all in the margins. She was born in 1865 and her dad was a captain in the civil war. I read THAT copy then showed it to my dad who didn’t even know that it existed. After my granddad died, my dad got that book and I’ll get it eventually.
The Ordinary Princess, The Bobbsey Twins, The Andrew Lang Fairy Books, Little House on the Prarie, LOTR, Old Mother Westwind, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Half Magic books, Pippi Longstocking, Betsy-Tacy and Tib, Black Beauty, any old fairy book I could find, Encyclopedia Brown, Laura Ingalls, the Famous Five, Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, East o the Sun and West o the Moon, 1001 Nights, anything Orson Scott Card, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (especially Going Postal, Thief of Time, and Monstrous Regiment), Shel Silverstein’s books, Mary Poppins, Robin Hood anything, King Arthur anything, The Wind in the Willows, Piratica, Witch’s Boy, Roald Dahl, Hardy Boys, and so much more!